The proposed research will examine the normative and psychological determinants of, and mutual influences and reciprocal consequences of, education, work, marriage, and fertility in a longitudinal study over the first four years after high school. The data will come from the National Longitudinal Study of the High School Class of 1972, which was sponsored by the National Center for Educational Statistics. A path analytic model will be applied in which traditional demographic and socioeconomic characteristics are treated as exogenous variables and psychological characteristics (principally locus of control and self-esteem) are treated as endogenous variables. The possibility of non-linear, configurational relationships also will be explored by an alternative analysis using the Automatic Interaction Detectot technique. Results for women and men will be compared, using exactly the same measures and methods of analysis for both. Four sub-studies will be conducted, the first examining patterns of reciprocal influence among education, work, marriage, and childbearing. The second will concern the influence of normative, psychological, and other characteristics on expected and actual fertility. The third sub-study will be relevant to questions of sex-role stereotyping in that it will examine the background, psychological, and experimental determinants of attitudes about women's roles. The fourth sub-study will evaluate the impact of varying degrees of success in attaining educational, work, marital, and fertility goals on subsequent self evaluation.